Hospital chapel in May 2025
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Jew’s Retreat
I was fascinated by the Jew’s Retreat line in Gina Wheeler’s postcard .
She sent us this explanation.
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A New Fire Engine
Danny O’Sullivan ‘s archive of old photos of Kanturk has this sequence from 1958.
God help the poor volunteer firemen in that firefighting gear.
In those days everything had to be blessed. Canon O’Leary and unnamed altar boy carrying the holy water blessed the new fire engine and the firemen.
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St. Mary’s
Text from Listowel and its Vicinity by Fr. Antony Gaughan
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Did you have one of these?
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Cows
Last week I included Kate Slevin’s photograph of cows sunbathing on Rosbeg beach .
Julie Evans responded;
Dear Mary
In today’s Listowel Connection there is a great photo of cows on a beach. I saw this at much the same time I saw the attached photo on Facebook. The cow in my photo was caught up in the catastrophic floods on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. It comes from a property in Wallanbah and was found 50 kms away, on the NSW coast, washed down the river to the ocean. Poor creature looks exhausted. An amazing story of survival. Its owner was identified by the ear tag and was on his way to collect it.
So many cattle, and other animals, lost in these floods and over 400 homes left completely uninhabitable. The recent flood is being called a one-in-500-years event.
Lovely to keep in touch through your ‘Connection’!
Love
Julie
Julie sent us some more links if you would like to read more about the flooding catastrophe.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-23/in-pictures-how-the-nsw-floods-impacted-people/105327638
It is unimaginable to us who slept in our warm beds last night. The government promises assistance and the Prime Minister is visiting to see for himself. Meanwhile, in South Australia there is drought and terrible winds creating dust storms. The red dust has even blown across to Sydney and the city is shrouded in a dirty haze.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-26/sa-gets-burst-of-windy-weather-and-rain/105335724
Truly Australia is a continent of contrasts.
Julie shared this poem
Dorothea MacKellar – Australian Bush Poetry
My Country
© 1904 Dorothea MacKellar
The love of field and coppice, of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance, brown streams and soft, dim skies-
I know but cannot share it, my love is otherwise.
I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror- the wide brown land for me!
The stark white ring-barked forests, all tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains, the hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops, and ferns the warm dark soil.
Core of my heart, my country! Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us we see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather, and we can bless again
The drumming of an army, the steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country! Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine she pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks, watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness that thickens as we gaze.
An opal-hearted country, a wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her, you will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours, wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly.
………………………………
“My Country” is an iconic patriotic poem about
Australia, written by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968)
at the age of 19 while homesick in England. After
travelling through Europe extensively with her father
during her teenage years she started writing the
poem in London in 1904[1] and re-wrote it several
times before her return to Sydney. The poem was
first published in the London Spectator in 1908 under
the title “Core of My Heart“. It was reprinted in many
Australian newspapers, quickly becoming well known
and establishing Mackellar as a poet.
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A Fact
Mummy Pig, mother of Peppa and George, gave birth to her third piglet, Evie Pig, in the very maternity hospital in London where Kate Middleton had her three royal children.
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